


what gives this mess some grace

by silver_penny



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dean Winchester is Sam Winchester's Parent, Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01, Pre-Series Dean Winchester, Stanford Era (Supernatural), because I'm never going to be over that, empty nester!Dean Winchester, to the best of my knowledge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_penny/pseuds/silver_penny
Summary: After Sammy leaves for school and Dad starts giving him solo cases, Dean’s alone in the Impala for the first time in his life.He drives.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	what gives this mess some grace

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Okkervil River's "Unless It's Kicks."

It hurts a lot more than he’d thought it would.

Dean’s flat on his back in a crummy little motel room a few miles out of Topeka, staring at the ceiling. It’s three am. There’s a case up the road in the morning, but right now there’s just the gasps of the sputtering AC on his right and the pit in his stomach. The room is too quiet, and he can’t sleep. How about that? Dean levers himself up just enough to reach over, snag the remote from off the table and flip on the dead hour infomercials. He changes channels until he falls asleep, the drone of the television masking any kind of noise he thinks he should be hearing instead.

He’s back up just a few hours later, the sun shining directly into his eyes, and now his stomach just aches from exhaustion, drilling into his gut in time with the throbbing at the back of his head. He drags himself up and through the door. Coffee.

* * *

Two weeks later and he’s finally meeting back up with Dad, in some nameless place in south Kentucky. They’re sitting across from each other in a diner and Dean is shifting in the booth, trying to get comfortable. It doesn’t really make sense to sit on either end, what with the whole bench to himself, but the seat’s sort of worn down on either side and there’s no good place for his butt in the middle. He shifts halfway to the side and shoves another couple of fries into his mouth.

“How was the shapeshifter?” Dad asks.

“Good, yeah,” Dean says. “Easy.” He makes a swooshing sound and slices his palm through the air. “Ganked it.”

“You know,” Dad says. “You keep running solo cases, you might want to think about keeping a journal.”

Dean eyes the overstuffed bulk of Dad’s journal where it sits at the edge of the table. Yeah, maybe…but he can’t really see the point. He’s not hunting anything new, and he knows for a fact Dad’s already recorded his last few cases in there anyway. Why double the work?

“You gonna stop letting me use yours?” he asks instead.

“I’m serious, Dean.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Find anything new?”

He can feel Dad’s eyes on his forehead as he ducks down to finish off his burger. It’s a very good burger; it deserves his attention.

Eventually, his Dad speaks up. “There’s something happening down south, in Arkansas – probably a haunting; it looks like it’s worth checking out. And I’ve found a case in Oklahoma as well, up in the panhandle.”

Dean can feel himself relax slightly – Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma: that’s a nice string of states, a decent drive. Dad keeps talking.

“The Arkansas case would be on the way, but the situation in Oklahoma looks bad. Mind taking Arkansas alone? I want to shoot all the way through to the panhandle tonight, get there before someone else gets hurt.”

And well. What the heck is he supposed to say to that?

“Yes, sir,” he says, grinning at the waitress as she comes up to their table. Before he can say anything, Dad jumps in.

“Can we get a couple slices of pie on our way out, sweetheart?”

Dean tears his gaze away and turns to look at his father, who’s winking down at him with a proud tilt to the edge of his mouth. It’s hard to look at, so he inspects the table instead. John digs his fries into his milkshake and the waitress brings over the pie. They leave cash on the table and push open the door to stand in the bright dry daylight outside.

“Call me once you get a lead,” Dad says, clapping him on the shoulder and turning to his car. “Hunt safe, Dean.” He nods.

Dean breathes in and out, shaking off the diner, and turns to the Impala, tucking his pie in the footwell and tearing off after his Dad out of the parking lot. He drives fifty miles directly behind him down the interstate before he turns off at the next exit and drives blindly to the nearest gas station. He leans against the hood and eats his pie.

* * *

He’s been cruising for hours, letting the radio drift across the local stations, when he stumbles across a college station in central Illinois blasting Zeppelin. The words are half-formed on his tongue when he turns to the passenger seat and –

Dean shuts his mouth and turns back to face the road. He cranks the radio up.

* * *

He’s good and drunk when he stumbles out of the bar and into an alleyway a few nights later, and if he didn’t have Sammy’s number on speed-dial he’s not sure he would have gotten through at all. As it is, he’s stuck listening to his mobile ring and ring and ring. Eventually it clicks, and Sammy’s voice trickles through the tinny speaker.

“Hello, you’ve reached Sam Winchester. Please leave a message after the beep.”

Dean wrenches the phone away from his ear and jabs at the end button until the call clicks off. For a long moment he collapses against the alleyway wall and breathes out into the cold air. Then he lifts his phone and dials Sammy again, listening to the voicemail message and cutting off the call before it can start to record. Dean stares blankly at the asphalt and cradles the phone in his filthy hand. He knocks his head back against the wall and lifts the phone for a third time.

He’s forgotten the calls to a beer-soaked haze of neon lights and bruised knuckles when the insistent ringing of his cell jolts him awake early the next morning. He’s got his phone in his hand before he’s even sat up, and he’s fumbling with the call button as he raises it to his ear.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Dean.” It’s Sammy. He feels his brain kick into high alert.

“Sammy, what’s wrong?”

“What’s – nothing’s wrong, Dean, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says on autopilot, brain racing ahead to worst-case and second-worse-case scenarios. Sammy hasn’t called him since before he left. “Why are you calling?”

“Why am _I_ calling? Oh, sure, that’s rich Dean, maybe because you _kept calling me last night_?”

It takes Dean a long, long second to process – too long, before he remembers, from past the haze, holding Sammy’s voice up to his ear the night before.

“Oh, that,” he says lightly, as if he can see Sammy’s glare from nine hundred miles away. “That was nothing, Sammy. You shouldn’t have worried yourself about it.”

“It’s Sam,” he corrects automatically. “No, I mean – just.” A sort of muffled crackly sound comes down the line. “Just don’t call over _nothing_ , okay?”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean’s offended now. Not that they were talking anyway, but – well. Principle of the thing, right?

Sam sighs. “Look, you just can’t scare me like that, alright? I’ve got study break in the evening and –“

Dean scoffs. “Ah, well I didn’t mean to scare apart your little study group. I won’t scare you again, okay?” He hangs up before he can think about it, dropping his cell to the side of the bed and fighting the instinct to curl up against the other side of the room, like he and Sammy’d done when they were fighting as kids. He feels like he’s been punched in the chest, and he regulates his breathing in long, deliberate strokes until the sun comes up. If he leaves behind a dented bedframe and a damp pillow, well then that’s between him and God.

* * *

He feels something lift off of his shoulders as he passes the border into South Dakota, and he cruises all the way to Sioux Falls. Bobby meets him at the doorway and demands a full report, criticizing his choices endlessly and calling him an idjit. They eat ribs on the back porch together and share a six-pack. An old friend of Bobby’s calls him up midway through and Dean makes snarky comments while Bobby coaches him through a ghouls’ nest. Dean spends all of the next day under his baby, easing her back into perfect condition and defending her to Bobby’s unrelenting skepticism. He doesn’t bring up John once, and so neither does Dean.

Turning out of Bobby’s driveway three days later is the first time in months Dean has been able to breathe so freely.

* * *

He’s swinging his backpack off and settling it on the floor of the backseat of the Impala, settling in behind Dad and eyeing Sammy where he’s slumped against the far door, glaring bitterly out of the window at Leeland Elementary. Specifically up at the fourth window to the left of the entrance, where his first-grade class had put up snowflakes earlier this week.

“You in, solider?” Dad asks, glancing up at him in the rearview mirror.

“Yes, sir,” he says, meeting his eyes from the backseat. “Ready to proceed.” He watches his Dad nod approvingly and waits until his eyes are back on the road to shift his gaze over to Sammy.

He knows why Sammy doesn’t want to leave. It had been a good school for Sammy – it had been a good school, actually – it was the kind of school with whole milk in the cafeteria and real plates, and proper dodgeballs for P. E. and bookshelves in every classroom. Dean knows Sammy had enjoyed it, had seen him with friends on the playground and stuck his head in Sammy’s classroom to see the star with his name on it at the top of the reading list. But Sammy doesn’t understand why they have to leave, why it’s more important that they keep moving and find the thing that killed Mom. He’s explained it before and Sammy won’t listen, and Dean knows if he tells him again it won’t make any difference, he’ll just sit there pouting out of the window and missing his friends. I mean you didn’t see Dean complaining about Ty and Ryan and Kenzie and those neat recorders in the music hallway, did you? You did not.

Dean bites his lip and waits until they’re cruising down the highway, tapes in and music up, before scooting over across the seat and poking Sammy. “Sammy,” he whispers. “Hey Sammy.”

Sammy ignores him.

“Hey _Sammy_ ,” he says again, poking him again for good measure. “Sammy, I’m talking to you.”

“Whatja want, Dean?” Sam mutters, finally glancing away from the window to turn his glare on Dean. His eyes are rimmed in red and his cheeks are flushed. Clearly this is more serious than he had thought.

Dean frowns and tilts his head forward, reaching out to tug on Sammy’s far shoulder. “Sammy, I gotta tell you something,” he whispers. Sammy’s still frowning, but he leans in too, and lets Dean pull him close, until it’s just the two of them in a little huddle in the backseat.

“Look, Sammy,” he whispers, and then hesitates, trying to put his secret into words. “Leaving that school sucks, right?” Sammy nods. “All your friends over there, they’re pretty cool people, huh?”

“And my teacher,” Sammy adds, whispering right back.

“And your teacher,” Dean agrees. “But look – other people? They need those kind of friends, okay? They’re nice. But us – hey, look at me, Sammy – if we’re together, we can do anything, okay? If you’re with your family then it’s always going to be okay, Sammy.”

“How do you know?” Sammy asks. His voice is small and he’s curled up enough to nearly be sitting in Dean’s lap.

“Because I’m older than you,” Dean says. “I did it already, and it’s okay.”

There’s a long pause while Sammy considers. Dean waits for him to puzzle through it.

“Just us?” he finally asks.

“Just us,” Dean confirms.

“Okay,” Sammy says, and nods to confirm. He doesn’t smile or perk up, but he lets the humming of the car and the exhaustion of a long day at school lull him to sleep, and he falls asleep with his head in Dean’s lap and his feet tangled around the straps of his own backpack. Dean stays perfectly still and lets everything in him be replaced with being-with-Dad and being-with-Sammy.

* * *

Ever since he made his decision he’s been pushing harder and farther every day, impatient now to be over with the waiting and back on the hunt. When the exhaustion hits him next the sun has long since set, and he’s at least an hour out of the nearest motel. Dean pulls the Impala over at the next grassy cutoff and dumps his pack over the seat into the back. He crawls in after it and sprawls across the bench seat like he’s six and not twenty-six. He loves his baby to Hell and back, but on nights like these he can taste his whole childhood in the back of his throat. He stares at the roof of his car and lets the weight of the world knock him out.

When he makes it to Stanford the next day, all that history is still pressing up from behind him. He sits in the Impala and explains to himself again and again exactly why Sammy should be on the hunt with him. The longer he lets himself go on, the more desperate he sounds. Eventually he’s out of reasons, and he’s out of daylight, and he’s out of patience with his own self-pity. Once he’s with Sammy, it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.

He takes a deep breath and steps out of the Impala.

**Author's Note:**

> All concrit welcome.


End file.
